Social Networking

Add me to your list, if I am not on it already! It would be nice to see a spike.

I find Twitter the most useful at the moment. For example, I was out early this morning getting a haircut before the day got busy and, PINGGGG, I had a message from an English journalist about something. Thus, I knew to check through my horrific e-mail inbox for something and also check my RSS feed reader.

I have a second, or "spare", Twitter account (@fatherzuhlsdorf), to which I may one day switch all me tweeting activity. But that’s another story.

I also have a Facebook account, but I don’t do much with it except loop in it with other notices from other doohickeys.

I obviously have a blog.

I am on Plurk, though my participation is a little thin right now.

On the left side bar of the blog, I have a Google thingy.

I have a donation button and a couple wish lists, including one on amazon. I consider these social networking tools of a different sort than the other "messaging" tools. Getting a donation or something from the list also sends a message. A positive message, to boot!

I also use Foursquare now, from my phone, which allows me to send Tweets indicating my location when I am at interesting places.

Skype is also a very important tool for me.

Let’s have a little poll on this.

Chose and answer and then make a comment in the combox, below. You might include a description of how you use these tools of social communication.

You might also make suggestions about what kind of new tool you hope to see.

Facebook is really good. I can keep in shouting distance of family and friends and have been able to hook up with numerous people I knew in school, etc.

Skype is excellent. And if one has friends or relatives who do not have skype it’s still invaluable. THere is a http://www.ring2skype.com website, which allows you to give yourself a phone number local to that person (sometimes.) For instance I have a friend in London who can’t use skype, but he can dial a number local to him (ergo a Local charge on his phone bill) but rings to my account.

I have a twitter account, but haven’t made much use of it. Sometimes you can be TOO connected. Though I suppose it would be useful, if say, you were kidnapped by the mafia and thrown in the trunk of a car and you needed to give a shout out. Otherwise I really don’t especially car to let people know if “I am sitting on the patio….” or if they are “sitting on the patio…”

Twitter is my favorite right now. I use Tweetdeck and run multiple columns. I love getting instant news and I’m impressed with how witty some people are. One of my columns is strictly for candidates running across the country; I like seeing what local issues the candidates address and also who are the rising stars out there. Another column is Facebook in a more (to me) streamlined and readable format. Tweetdeck gives me a quick snapshot of everything current with the world, and with personal friends and family. I hardly touch email anymore.

I use Twitter and Facebook and I have a blog, which is the centre of my social networking. I post updates in my blog on Twitter and FB, although there is also a fair share of social interaction with friends and acquantiances there, of course.

I’m also somewhat active on SQPN.com, in the ‘Secrets of Star trek’ podcast series. Not really a social network, but it’s new media! :)

I used to be active on Plurk too, but my contacts there overlapped with my contacts elsewhere, so it was quite superfluous.

I’ve been following @FatherZ for a while now and I just added @FatherZuhlsdorf.

For the most part, I enjoy Twitter and think that it can be a valuable social media tool but I wish they would do something about the Fail Whale frequency. With as much usage as they have, I would think that they would do something about the frequent outtages. But, hey, it’s free so I shouldn’t (but I will) complain.

I voted zero even though I have a blog and a twitter account. I have a grand total of 2 blog posts and about 15 twitter posts – all of which are over a year old.

It’s not that I have nothing to say, it’s that I don’t want to take the time to compose blog posts for which no one will ever read. Plus there is the feeling that the posts are nothing more than vanity – “Look at me, look at me!”

That’s not to knock the Fr Z’s, the Jimmy Akin’s and the Patrick Madrid’s of the world who use social media as part of their vocation of evangelization or dissemination of information. Social networking has its place. For me personally it is a vanity trap.

**Blogger
**Twitter – Sometimes more than other times. I dont have a phone to use it from really… so it becomes a blog “linker” when I dont update it much.
**Plurk – I love my online St. Plurksvill community. Father, you should get back into it.
**Skype – just getting into it more.
**AIM – Still….
**Google Chat
**Facebook – A page for blog; and my personal one.
**Amazon & Aquinas N More Wish List – Presents are fun.

I only use ICQ while on the computer, and even that only a little bit. None of those other things.

My cell phone is bare-bones and unused, since I only have one for possible emergencies when traveling; it’s only turned on when I’m driving on out-of-town trips.
(this probably makes me a dinosaur). :-)

I have a Facebook page but I rarely use it so I marked “0”. I regularly read this blog and maybe a couple of others but I don’t use social networking tools because I find they cause me to waste a lot of time when I have way too many books to read …..

for the record, i used to have skype but only use it when absolutely necessary since i believe skype is on LDI’s list of companies which give to PP. as in paypal/ebay, which is why i would like to know if there’s any other way to send Fr.Z a donation.

I use Facebook every day and I have periods in which I use Twitter a lot. All of my friends are on FB, though, so I don’t have much reason for anything else. Used to have MySpace, but too many creepy people, so I got rid of it. I also did Plurk for a while but it just ended up kind of redundant. I do have my own blog, but I don’t write in it nearly as often as I used to.

I have a fairly new blog (http://feminainnuptacatholica.wordpress.com) and a facebook account. I restrict my facebook friends to people that I have (at least) met in person and want to keep in touch with. I’ve had numerous twitter invitations but I have no interest in it.

Technically I have a skype account but I’ve never used it and I use google chat to converse with an out of town friend now and then.

I forgot to count Goodreads.com. I don’t keep it up to date with what I’m reading.

I’ve tried Facebook (my wife is on it constantly with even ‘push’ messages to her iPhone) but it was too spammy. I did the constant “chat” thing back in the late 80’s and early 90’s and now, I really don’t care if a “friend” I haven’t seen in fifteen years went to the State Park.

I skype with family on a regular basis. I love visiting with the Grands. They ‘show and tell’ their projects (so do their folks ;-)).
I use facebook and twitter as well. Of the three I use Facebook the least.

I used to use Facebook extensively, but I ended up deactivating my account to save time. I’ve been on Twitter just to follow people for the past two years until recently when I noticed very little content in Latin. I decided to tweet the book of Proverbs in Latin a couple of weeks ago. I have small number of follows (11 so far). @LiberProverbia. I just tweeted Proverbia 2:11 about 10 minutes ago. I try to do 3 each day – but sometimes only 1 or 2 if I’m insanely busy.

I chose 5 or more… Facebook, Myspace (hardly), text, three blogs on Blogger, Skype, IM’s (yahoo and msn mostly), GWave, Amazon Wishlist, a forum or two… among others :)… I use texting probably the most to save on my phone minutes and because I’m not crazy about talking on the phone; plus I gave up Facebook for 30 days, so text has again become a primary communication tool for me. Day 15 on the Facebook self-imposed ban! Woot!

It’s interesting that “0” is winning, and hopeful, I believe. My thoughts are expressed by Karen and “irishgirl”. I use Google Reader, but that doesn’t really count. (That’s how I get my daily briefings from you, Father! Then I go over to the web site.) There’s too much info put “out there”, and we just had that happen in our family – personal info that’s not anyone’s business. Some people are brain smart and lacking in common sense. Forgive the rant! :)

I voted for ONE social networking, I use facebook because my adult children do, and now so many of my friends do that it has been a net plus for keeping in touch and arranging visits.

But I also network through yahoo groups and other groups to which I belong. These subject/activity oriented groups also serve a social purpose but are not like facebook so I am not certain where they fall.

Alas, my cell phone is ONLY a phone, no tweets, no texts, no camera….I am so not up to date LOL!

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“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

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“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

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